The official bulletin of the American Guild of Organists, combined with the Church-Music Review, published by Novello, Ewer & Co., has made its initial bow to the public and is to be commended to every member of the Guild as well as to every organist. A monthly periodical at fifty cents per annum, it is within the reach of everyone who is at all interested in the organ and the choir.
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The American Guild of Organists will hold its next examination for Associates on December 11th at South Church, New York, and by the local examiners in the following cities: S. Tudor Strang, Philadelphia; Harrison Wild, Chicago; Wallace A. Sabin, San Francisco; William Kaffenberger, Buffalo; George A. Parker, Syracuse; Walter E. Hall, Pittsburgh; J. C. Batchelder, Detroit; George A. Kies, Norwich, Conn.; John J. Miller, Norfolk, Va.; and Everett E. Truette, Boston.
The local examiners pass only on the organ-work of the candidates, the paper work being forwarded to the committee in New York.
The fee is $10.00, with an additional $2.00 for the certificate.
Public services of the Guild will be held in Trinity Church, Grace Church, Church of the Divine Paternity, St. Bartholomew’s, New York; and Cathedral of the Incarnation, Garden City, Long Island.
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Mr. E. G. Jardine, in giving an organ-recital in Rockland County, New York, included on his program an original “Thunder-Storm,” after which a farmer said to him: “Say, Mister, you don’t want to play that there ‘Thunder-Storm’ here again. Why, it turned all the milk in my dairy sour!”
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Mr. Will. C. Macfarlane is giving a series of organ- recitals at St. Thomas’s Church, New York, on the first Monday afternoon of each month.
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It is stated that Mr. Carnegie has bought 350 organs, costing from $1500 to $3500, which will be given to Scotch churches. The prejudice against “the box of whistles,” says the Christian Register, must have abated, to make such gifts acceptable.
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Dr. E. J. Crow, the well-known organist of Ripon Cathedral, England, has resigned the post which he
has so honorably filled for twenty-eight years.
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An organ for the Jesuit’s church, Shanghai, has been built by a Chinese convert with all the pipes made of bamboo instead of metal. The tone is said to be incomparably sweet.
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It would be better to disband the finest church-choir in the world than to allow the house of God to be made into a musical show-room!—Sir John Stainer.
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The post of organist of the Town Hall, Sydney, Australia, is one of the most important in the world. The organ is the largest in the world, having five manuals and one hundred and twenty-six speaking stops. The salary is $2500.00 per year, and among the duties of the incumbent is that of giving weekly organ-recitals throughout the year. The organist has sole control of the organ for practice, pupils, etc., and becomes a strong candidate for the position of organist at the cathedral.
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It must make the heart of every American musician burn with shame when he reads now and then of the efforts of some association in New York to prevent the landing in this great and free country of some foreign musician who is an artist, on the ground that American labor (even among musicians) must be protected.
Mr. G. W. Vanderbilt engaged Mr. Flaxington Harker, of England, as organist of his church at Biltmore. Learning that a determined effort was being made in New York to prevent Mr. Harker’s landing, Mr. Vanderbilt’s representatives quietly smuggled him into the country before his name was even known.
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Mr. Mayo, organist of First Unitarian Church, Waterville, Me., has entered his thirty-sixth year in that capacity.
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A very large four-manual organ is to be built by the Hutchings-Votey Organ Company for the new Woolsey Memorial Hall at Yale College. There will be 76 speaking stops, 17 couplers, 20 adjustable combination pistons, and 13 pedal movements. The special features will be the compass of the pedal organ (up to G), the absence of the usual amount of mixtures stops (only 2 in the organ), and the size of the pedal organ (19 stops). The action will be tubular throughout.
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Dr. Gerrit Smith and his excellent choir (double quartet and chorus of forty-five voices) are giving a series of special praise services on the last Sunday afternoon of each month at the South Church, New York. Gaul’s “Holy City,” Mendelssohn’s “Elijah,” Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio,” Handel’s “Messiah,” Gounod’s “Redemption,” Mendelssohn’s “St. Paul,” and Haydn’s “Creation” are among the works to be given.
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A series of six organ-recitals is being given at All Souls’ Church, New York, on the second Monday evening of each month by Mr. Walter C. Gale. The “Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue” of Thiele, “First Sonata” of Dieuel, “Fourth Sonata” of Rheinberger, “Fantasia in C” of Tours, and “Concert Piece in G” of Guilmant are among the compositions being performed.
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Mr. E. T. Baldwin has just completed his forty-fourth year as organist of the Hanover Street Congregational Church, Manchester, N. H.
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Mr. Charles Heinroth is giving a series of six organ-recitals at the Church of the Ascension, New York, on the first Wednesday of each month. Notable works on the programs are: “Fourth Sonata,” Rheinberger; “Variations in A-flat,” Thiele; “Fifth Symphony,” Widor; “Concert Satz in C-minor,” Thiele; “First Sonata,” Guilmant; “Fugue in B, A, C, H,” Liszt; “First Sonata,” Mendelssohn; “Sonata in C-minor,” Baldwin; “Gothic Suite,” Boellmann; “Sonata in C-minor,” Rheinberger; “Ninety-fourth Psalm Sonata,” Reubke; “Toccata and Fugue in F” and “Prelude and Fugue in B-minor” of Bach.
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Mr. Frank Henry Simms, one of the best-known organists of the South, died in New Orleans, November 6th, at the age of forty-eight. He was born in Staffordshire, Eng., and studied at the Royal Academy under Sir George MacFarran. Delicate health compelled him to live in the warmer climate, and he went to New Orleans, becoming organist of St. Paul’s, of the Jewish Temple Sinai, and Director of Music in Newcomb College.
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The large four-manual organ which has stood in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, on which so many concerts have been given in the past six months, is to be presented to the City of Buffalo by Hon. J. N. Adam, of Buffalo, and placed in Convention Hall, thus giving the organists of the city a permanent concert organ in a hall available for concert purposes.
